Update on Project ActivitiesThe team did not meet this week outside of class, but we came into this week with a lot of insight and direction as to what information and data we need to acquire in order to move our project forward. Janice suggested that we use specific streets in District 6 and analyze whether the LTS biking metric can help improve these streets and make them safer for bikers as well as pedestrians. As a group, we have been researching the applications of LTS to intersections to get an idea of what would be considered a safe intersection versus an unsafe intersection. We have also been gathering information from other bikeability metrics, such as Long Beach and Copenhagen, in order to get an idea of what actually works and what is actually a reachable improvement for intersections in San Francisco specifically, since San Francisco has many physical features that make applying LTS fairly difficult.

Since our meeting with David from the Stanford Geospatial Center on Friday, we have been searching for mapping data that would be useful for the creation of our GIS map. Stanley and Derek have put together a rough dataset with all pertinent street and intersection information critical for completing our map. Hopefully, SFMTA gets back to us with mapping data on intersection activity that would be applicable to evaluating whether an intersection has suitable characteristics for the amount of traffic fluctuating through it. David also shared a few links with us that use Carto and AGO as a guide for web mapping our data that we find. Plus a tutorial on how to get the street intersections from the street line data.

What We Learned and ObservedI think that the most important thing we learned and observed this week was that making our GIS map is the easy portion of the project. The most challenging component is finding legitimate data that we can actually apply to our project. There are many different sets of data about biking routes and improvement of overall biking comfortability, so it is challenging to find the exact data we need to mold our GIS map. Now that we have some specific direction from Janice regarding what information we need to acquire, gathering information and data have become a lot more feasible for the group.

Critical Analysis/Moving ForwardAt this point, we have successfully divided up the research that each group member will do regarding the pitfalls of LTS and are currently filling out our final PowerPoint and final scope of work. Since we have a draft of a GIS map, we can now try to incorporate other interactive features within our map and make it more user friendly and understandable for audiences. Getting all of the information and data together now will make forming our final draft of the project a lot easier. Considering our pace on completing the project was slow at first because of how broad our topic is, finally narrowing down the things we need to research will allow for faster understanding and direction for finalizing our project deliverables.